In addition to the big announcement today that the Amazon App Store will be coming to BlackBerry 10 later this year, BlackBerry also dropped word that they'll be shutting down their music and video stores on July 21st. Any media that you've already purchased (including music, movies and TV shows) will continue to be available, you just won't be able to purchase new content.

The Amazon App Store and BlackBerry World will both have third-party offerings for music and videos, so there will still be plenty of options after things go dark.

In addition to the greater selection of apps, you will be able to access video and music services through a number of popular third party services available through the Amazon Appstore and BlackBerry World. While BlackBerry World will continue to offer music and video services via third party applications – again giving you more choices for your valued content — we will be closing the music and video sections of our store on July 21st. Don't worry! Previously downloaded content will be available after that date through MyWorld.

So for those of you that had a big attachment to the BlackBerry World music and video stores — we're sorry. But don't fret because you'll still have plenty of alternatives come the fall.

Will amazon now also offer native BlackBerry apps? Only stands to reason that BlackBerry World morphs into the amazon app store as a dual arrangement. It could be billed as BlackBerry World powered by Amazon and/or vice versa.

I highly doubt it. That's the only way this announcement would have been palatable to me, is if Amazon either made native Amazon Music/Video/Kindle apps or became the content provider in BlackBerry World. Instead, we get neither.

Sad thing is, BlackBerry could have made money on music and video if they were committed to it. But they did it sort of half-hearted and outsourced the back end and never promoted it, and now BlackBerry will be the only major smartphone platform without access to this content built in.

Where BlackBerry went wrong is when they used 7digital but wouldn't tie BlackBerry world into existing 7digital accounts. ie I couldn't access my playbook music, or music purchased on my pc, via BlackBerry world. Even though all 3 were under the same user email and with 7digital. I spoke to 7Digital about this and they basically said it was out of there hands and a BlackBerry decision, and gave me the details to complain to BlackBerry about it.

To be honest I don't get the app-gap thing, as far as I see it there may be some key apps missing (like Netflix, which I don't use anyway)... but there's a lot of trash apps aimed at kids in play store. I had this issue with Microsoft store for my surface... it was hard to spend my a £25 voucher without buying music or videos. if I had a £25 BlackBerry App voucher it'd be spent in minutes!

I have amazon appstore installed, i find nothing of value. And I am a pro amazon consumer! I should probably have shares for what I spend with them! The layout and promotion of apps in BlackBerry world is far better. And most apps I find through those promotions, friends, a need to complete a specific task or crackberry reviews.

Amazon mp3 for android is installed on my phone already via the amazon app store (which is simple to install), a native version of amazon mp3 which saves my cloud music to sd card would be awesome.

Selling android apps via BlackBerry world so that all apps are in one place would be good... especially if the android apps were 'BB10 tested' - not quite 'built for BlackBerry' but a sign that an app should work. Even better if only apps that are tested would be sold in the first place.

So the question is. I'm a huge fan of buying films from BlackBerry World. When 10.3 is released and this all takes effect. Will we be able to go into the Amazon App store and purchase a video as we already are doing in BlackBerry World.

Not with the sky high prices BlackBerry was trying to ram down customer's throats. Case in point, the picture of the movie 300 above. Would YOU pay $19.99 for that? I'm also not a proponent of digital downloads either and this situation highlights that preference. I'm old school and prefer to actually own a physical copy of my media that I can do what I wish with (lend, rip to put on many devices, etc.) If a studio decides to shut down their services, with physical media, there is zero customer impact. Granted in this case BB says they will let you still have access to your media, but for how long? Unless you have some kind of contract in writing...I wouldn't bet on it being forever.

I wouldn't know since I don't "do" Apple anything. But regardless, that doesn't make these extreme prices justified when I could buy a physical DVD for the same price if not cheaper. Blu Ray's might even be close to this price...but I still own the disc.

At best BlackBerry will earn a percentage of sales. At worst the man from California is preparing consumer users of BlackBerry for a post-BlackBerry reality. Nothing this company does makes any sense. Chen may as well put a bullet in the head of the company and bury it without fanfare. Combine this announcement with 10.3 being the last update for "legacy" BlackBerry 10 smartphones and the writing is on wall my friends.

This is what I would like to know. While I won't pay $19.99 for a movie, I have purchased several for 99 cents and a show here and there. High quality content as far as I'm concerned. I hope the quality is there with any replacements....does this apply to Video Store on the PlayBook as well, or just BB10?

Think in the long run it is good for BlackBerry users and in the short term from BlackBerry. Really doubt there is going to be any revenue sharing going on... Amazon is the one in control here, BlackBerry needs them much more than Amazon needs a few million possible customers.

Still think they should revamp BBM music and integrate it in cross platform BBM. Model BBM music after other services such aas slacker, Pandora or Songza. And yes my Q10 has the double "aa" issue. That issue is for another post.

Not to get off subject but I've got a problem with my Q10 that I haven't figured out. Sometime when I'm typing out a message, I press the "sym" key for the special characters but the on-screen keyboard doesn't come up. The only way I can get it to work mid message is if I tap on the screen & then the on-screen keyboard shows up with the special characters. I didn't have this problem until I updated to 10.1. However, I have yet to suffer the dreaded double letter type you referred to.

Personally I never bought a single audio/video file from BBW. I always used other methods mostly because I forgot music and video were available. I can see BlackBerry bringing these options back someday, but maybe with options built into the media player for easier access

Closing the stores is probably part of the deal to get better amazon integrated , I would be surprised if it wasn't. Hopefully the Kindle app will work better in the future. I've installed / uninstalled BlackBerry and android versions over 8 times. Some wouldn't open others take awhile to open . Kobo works fine on my Z10.

I see some people complaining about this deal and I go like "wao",i mean right now we have exactly the same situation if not worst than when this deal goes into effect,people have to first side load snap in order to get their Android apps in their phones, that won't be a problem anymore once the amazon app is available (hopefully a native one),not only that I'm pretty sure that blackberry will optimize the runtime so it will run almost flawless in our phones once 10.3 drops,also bbworld will get rid of all that non native garbage that we have right now and concentrate on helping the true developers,so this is a great thing for everybody if you think about it.

Now we can only hope that Amazon announces that their new phone runs BB10!..... a yeah right, that would mean paying for something when there is a free alternative and the Amazon DNA is never pay for anything you can get for free.

I have the amazon music app on my BB Z10. Amazon contacted me and requested I download it on my BB10 device. I'm an Amazon Prime member and I love the music app. I can stream a ton of music through it for free but I can also buy albums or songs if I want and it loads all the music on my phone through the app so I can listen to the music on my phone through the app as well without streaming anything. As an Amazon customer I'm very happy with this and I think BB is making some very smart moves.

And this boys and girls is further evidence that BlackBerry is going down hard and fast. Lifejackets are in your cabins. Please proceed calmly to the lifeboats after fetching your lifejacket; nobody boards a lifeboat without a lifejacket. Oh right! Women and children first. Deja vu.

That's ridiculous. In the internet business you want to be #1 or #2, so selling Media is not the core business of BBRY, phones, BBM, BB10, QNX the internet of things is their core business. Making media deals and getting a penny here or there on a song is a great business, but Amazon and ITunes have it covered.

After reading this more closely, I guess it's not clear that Amazon music and video will be available, but if they are entering into an agreement with BlackBerry, I can't imagine them not offering this content

Will this Amazon app store be any different to the one many of us are already using in 10.2? It's not as smooth as bbw and less content than Google but it's good enough. Maybe they are doing a native version.

An amazon partnership will be good IF they do it so you can open up BBW and they had "All / Apps / Games / Android (Amazon) Apps / Android (Amazon) Games". In its current form, just making the Android Appstore App available within BBW, that's a total joke. Even my grandma was able to Google "download amazon app store", click the first link - http://www.amazon.com/gp/mas/get-appstore/android/?tag=crackberryb-20&m1... and install the apk from the BB10 browser.

Not sure where they are going with this UNLESS what I first mentioned was their end-game strategy. If so, I welcome that change.

What would make a lot of sense is for Amazon to buy BlackBerry then amazon could spread their marketplace into the commercial / industrial space. An area they don't have a solid hold of. Imagine the amazon marketplace linked directly into a company's erp / enterprise servers.

Had issues with Amazon in the past. They frequently loose or do not renew license rights for movies. When that happens, the end user who purchased, not rented, the movie looses the right to access it. I stopped using Amazon a long time ago after spending hundreds of dollars on purchasing digital content just to loose access to it at a later date because of the way they license it.

In addition, the apps in The Amazon store usually are older versions than GooglePlay.

This begs the question, why has BlackBerry not moved forward with getting BB10 certified to attach to GooglePlay?

I'm very disappointed by this news. I currently have 14 movies on my z10, all purchased from BlackBerry World and frequently watched on flat screen TVs in hotels while I'm on the road thanks to the micro HDMI output. (don't get me started on the rumours that neither the Classic or Windemere will be equipped with a micro HDMI output). When I first heard the news, I simply assumed that this meant we would have access to Amazon music and video content in their App Store however I have since come to realize that neither music or video content is available via the Amazon App Store. Downloading a third party app and then downloading content via that app is just adding an extra step in a process that up until this announcement was seemless and worked quite well on BB10. Can somebody please let John Chen know that "prosumers" and "enterprise customers" like consuming media on their devices just as much as regular smart phone users (if not more so as they tend to travel more often) and that the fact that BlackBerry ignored this reality a few years ago is one of the reasons why they're in this situation in the first place??

Well said. Do people really think "prosumers" are robots that only use productivity apps? I will not be signing up for any 3rd party apps. I'll switch back to iTunes, which is not ideal because I don't want to give more money to Apple.

I have the Amazon mp3 app on my z10 right now. Also have the Amazon app store to. I can browse and buy/download mp3s right now. There are articles on crackberry that tells how to install the app store.

Can you do another write up responding to the amazon app store? When I searched for apps this morning in it, every android app that I have, I could not get from amazon. Is it going to be that big of a step without Google play services? Or will the amazon store expand a lot more because of the phone it is introducing today?

OK so I understand the move to get everything on Amazon in the Fall, but where the heck do I purchase my music from over the next 3 + months until the amazons ecosystem is launched? Since they're gassing the BlackBerry World in July for media content where I currently download songs? That's a huge gap. I buy music often.

This is a little bit sad for me, BBW is the only place I rented movies. With the HDMI port on my phone it's the best way to rent and watch. Hopefully Amazon will fill that void but I'm not keen on Amazon because of their employment practices... kinda the Darth Vader of employers. I’m pretty sure they're building a death star kinda like Google building driverless cars.

I don't want 3rd party apps that I have to sign up to some sort of subscription or whatever. I have bought a lot of music from BlackBerry World, and like how easy it is. Just like iTunes. I don't use Spotify, or Netflix, or any other streaming music or movie services.

So will they rename BlackBerry World back to BlackBerry App World? I won't be able to use carrier billing, I assume. I'll have to switch back to iTunes and give my money to Apple.
It's things like this that people want to have available. iOS and Android have these services seamlessly available. I have no interest in using 3rd party apps to do what was integrated into BlackBerry World. Apps like Sound Hound will have to be updated to remove the Buy option which was a link to the song in BlackBerry World.
This just tells people that business is still really bad, and to stay away because services you want don't exist and others that do will likely end up shutting down, as well. Bets on what they shut down next?

I think it probably had more to do with Amazon wanted something in return for their support. They have to get something out of this deal and having all BlackBerry users migrate to their platform for media was probably the carrot that sealed the deal.

I just posted lady night that I predicted one day we would see BlackBerry as a hardware manufacturer running Android OS with Blackberry's proprietary nuggets such as their keyboard, swipe gestures etc. We are getting closer.

Again, more compatibility is fine so long as they give us full FUNCTIONALITY. That is, make the Android apps that push notifications, like sports apps, actually work.

The writing is on the wall for me. Will BlackBerry World be next to go dark in favor of Amazon? Hmmm

Re: Google Services, this would result in me selling-off all my Blackberries and moving to a different platform.

If I wanted that snoopery garbage on my smartphone I certainly would not have suffered all the disadvantages of BB10's platform immaturity and mismanagement when I could have just bought an Android device and be done with it.

BlackBerry music wasn't profitable because even BlackBerry users think itunes......lol. Music and video content are easily obtained anywhere. Most just steal it. So it's a no brainer for BBW to drop it.

Yes - but 3 of the movies I have purchased in BlackBerry App world not longer work because the license is no good and when I search for it again on BlackBerry App world they are no longer there. I'm taking this with a grain of salt.

Thank god. I was burned for paying triple for a album purchase on my credit card from BlackBerry, and tried every possible legitimate way to get resolution. I finally gave up after 4 months. Never purchased anything from BlackBerry again...too bad.

Hmm, Amazon MP3s can be dubious quality..
I had some tracks with gaps in them... (did get a refund for those though, so kudos there) and I also have two or three tracks with audible compression artefacts...

Some will claim that 320kBit/s is a waste of space - bit for MP3 it is the best quality you'll get, period.
No compression artefacts and if one wants something better, well one has to use another codec.

So losing BlackBerry music will be bad there...

As to videos: I object to the idea of DRM "protected" video downloads - nevertheless, at 79 pence ago I bought so.e videos off the BlackBerry video shop.
I guess in future I will have to go back to dvds (maybe bluray) where I am certain i'll like the film and where it is worth the expense to me.
I.e. I'll be more selective.

On the plus side: I have books calling my name - so I'll gain time instead.

This new is somewhat sad, as I have used the video store quite a bit to watch videos within the big screen with the HDMI connection. It has been so easy and handy to use when wanting to rent a movie!!!!! Does anyone have any suggestions as to what app(s) to use in the future that would have a similar selection of movies and similar rental price?

I'm apprehensive, I know money needs to be made, however I'm seeing less and less of an ecosystem. I'm wanting the Internet of Things but I'm not seeing anything I can tap into at the moment. And while enterprise are leaving BlackBerries and opting for iPhone and Samsungs because most staff want that ( more like just the IT guy. )

I'm not seeing the BlackBerry ecosystem grow to make them sticky.

Take icloud which mot only.backs up your content, but even syncs your applications across devices, namely iPad, iPhone and Mac's.
It's convenient and allows the easy transition from one form factor to another.

I think BlackBerry should almost do the opposite, have the phone hardware be your computer, but be able to transition to different form factors while maintaining app quality and dynamics.

Canada site only has music purchases and you need the amazon mp3 player to buy them. BBWORLD at least allowed me to use PayPal, Amazon wants my credit card... I've gone to the the Amazon.com site to rent a movie and they won't download. So looks like we're stuck buying the Blu-ray disk and download the media after. Gee thanks.

I'm still old fashioned I guess, and still prefer physical copies of my favourite music, movies and books.

Yet the fact that I was able to put my entire musical collection (a lot of freaking CD's) on what is now called the IPod classic (the only Apple product I actually like) was pretty sweet.

Now if this partnership with Amazon brings us access to HBO, Showtime and more variety from Starz, FX and AMC content, plus better priced movies and music, then I'm all for it. I just hope the offerings are uniform in all countries...and not wake up that for example "Game Of Thrones" is not available for rent or sale in Canada.

Just a question, I have a small movie collection on my PlayBook as well as the first two seasons of "Spartacus"...will they still be available to me to view them...and can I transfer them to my Z10?

I don't like this. Apple has never gotten a single cent from me. I have never purchased anything from itunes. so I was quite happy when blackberry world got a decent music story with BB10. i actually started paying for music! i am not a huge fan of apps like spotify or other streaming services just because I don't have a very large data plan and I am not always on wifi during the day. so unless I we get access to Amazon's MP3 store (which I don't think is even available in Canada)
I guess it will be back to cds and bit torrents for me:(

I already have Amazon Appstore on my Z10. As well as Netflix. It's a great opportunity to blend android apps and Blackberry Apps. No other phone can do this. Also I am sad to see the media services go as i use them frequently.

I have the Amazon App Store loaded on my Z10, and unless they are making a "special" BB10 version, there is no music or video available. So it'll be through a 3rd party app... I much prefer it all in one spot, not 3 different stores. Oh well, gotta take the good with the bad I guess.

pretty lame news, considering I'm going to be without a video store for awhile :/. at least I'll still be able to access the ones I purchased already. guess we're going to lose some good deals that we had in the past too. I hope this is for the better

That sucks. I never did download music or movies from blackberry world. If I did, it would suck too. But yeah, sometimes things aren't as profitable and changes need to happen. Also, when will amazon expand outside the USA? It's pretty ignorant to think that is the ONLY market.

...band aid, band aid, band aid......how about market the platform properly and once the thing takes off as people will know it exists...then native apps will come and they won't need weak Android apps...I will NOT D/L Amazon and give them my CC information and I have no use for patch work apps. I guess I will go back to the 7digital store on the PC for my music, and just get movies through Rogers...they (BlackBerry) had it good with everything in one spot like the other players, and I for one used BlackBerry World heavily for tunes and video as the quality and consistency was very good......this is a step backwards as far as I'm concerned....

It makes sense. I rented a few movies from BBW and bought a few of the. 99 cent ones but I have Amazon App store and was wondering how to access their Instant Video. Since Netflix and Beats Music already work fine on 10.2, the agreement with Amazon is a no brainer. Books, music, apps, and videos are sure to be available at some point.

It would be better, and more convenient to integrate music and movies within World than to have to jump from World, to Amazon App, and Amazon MP3. I hope the ultimate goal is to eventually consolidate all of these categories into one place...preferably Blackberry World.

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